


sub rosa

by thankyouturtle



Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/pseuds/thankyouturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most terrifying thing about Peggy is the way she always throws him off-balance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sub rosa

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mild sexism and a gay slur.

Howard Stark slept alone.

That probably would have come as a shock to a large number of people, or at least to the large number of people who professed to care about such things. His bachelor status was known, of course, but it was generally assumed that a man with his money, intelligence, and, of course, good looks and charm, would never be lacking in company. And Howard knew that he'd certainly have his pick of women from the secretaries and younger sisters and dancers that he met - if only he'd meet one that he actually cared to pick.

Howard was nothing if not capable of incredibly complex and rational thought, and he'd refined his problem down to two points. The first was, of course, that there was something intrinsically frightening about women - their come-hither glares, their immaculate make-up and carefully waved hair, and the way that nothing, absolutely nothing, you said to them was ever the right thing.

The second point, and the real kicker, was that the only woman for whom he was prepared to ignore these horrifying habits had her own ways of terrifying him. Some of these related directly to the fact that she was definitely, probably, a member of the British Secret Service and knew thirty different ways of killing him without even touching him. But a far bigger factor, as far as Howard was concerned, was her habit of throwing him completely off-balance every time he saw her.

Like this evening, for example, when he was quietly minding his own business in his own house with his own glass of whiskey on the rocks, only to find that she was lounging gracefully on the antique chaise-longue in his sitting room. "I should have known you were here," he greeted her. "The way that my locks weren't picked and none of the windows have been broken should have been a perfect give away. _Please_ tell me you're not here to steal any of my designs."

"Really, Howard," she said. "If I was here for that you wouldn't actually get to _see_ me. No, I'm afraid I'm here for strictly personal reasons."

Howard eased himself into one of the more comfortable armchairs. "What kind of personal?"

She cocked a perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Howard, darling," she said warmly. "Are you a fairy?"

Howard inhaled rather more whiskey than he'd been intending. Peggy's face was as unreadable as ever, and as usual she gave him that intimidating feeling that she knew far more about him than he'd ever know about her.

"I would have thought our last meeting had made it _very clear_ that I do, in fact, like women," he said, as flippantly as possible under the circumstances.

"Of course you do," she assured him, and he retreated hastily into his glass. Peggy stood, and turned towards the window. Howard was particularly pleased with that window, which gave him one of the best views in the state; now he was even more pleased, as it meant Peggy's back was to him and she couldn't see his face. "I used to watch you, sometimes," she said, her voice echoing off the glass, "when you were talking to Steve. I don't suppose that anyone else ever saw it, because they were _soldiers_ , not spies, and soldiers aren't trained to notice. Not in that way, anyway. And _I_ couldn't help noticing, you see, because the way you looked while you were with him - it was the same way that I looked."

She turned back towards him, and she was smiling. For a horrible moment Howard wondered if that was how a shark looked just before it attacked its prey. But her eyes - they weren't smiling and vicious. They were sad. "This isn't an interrogation, Howard," she said. "I'm not going to make you admit anything. But I- there's no one left that I can talk about him with. Even his men - he was a symbol, I know that. And I'm not the only person who loved him, I know that too. But I'm almost the last person left who loved him as a _man_ , who remembers him as that brave scrawny boy who threw himself on a grenade, who -" her voice cracked, and she stopped.

"You British," Howard said. "So backwards about emotions." He leant forward and offered her his glass, and by the time she'd taken a long draught her face was once more schooled to expressionlessness. "I like women," he said again. "But - yeah, OK. I guess I liked Cap too. A dumb kid with the heart of a lion and ball- and brave as one, too." And at least with Cap he could always tell what was going through his damn head. He still didn't know what _Agent_ Carter actually wanted from him. "Uh, if you want to talk about it-"

"I don't," she informed him, her accent more clipped than ever. "I just needed to know that there was someone else - who remembered that he was more than just a legend."

"I don't think I could ever forget," Howard said, and for a long moment they just looked at each other, and Howard knew - well, suspected - that they were both thinking of the first time the three of them had been alone together, on that first flight, on Caps' first mission, all nerves and gunfire and ineffectual flirting.

She was dressed and gone by the time he woke up the next morning, of course.


End file.
